Printer for Student

[Mem]

No sooner do I get to school than my free HP 5150 printer (after the Apple rebate) craps out on me. After doing a total of about 10 print jobs. grr I guess I should've known better since it was free.

Anyway I'm obviously looking for a new printer. I don't want to deal with an All-In-One and I think I'm done with HPs. It's my opinion that they used to make good products but are now crap (have a 560c from back in the day which I loved but now have the 2175 at home and this other one at school with me -not pleased with either)

I'm looking for a printer that wasy to use, is RELIABLE, and works well with a Mac (drivers were a pain to install with the HP-hoping to avoid that this time around).

So I've heard good things about Canon. Any recommendations...they don't have to be Canons, I'm just looking for suggestions. Alson, I'm looking to spend no more than about $150.00.

Thanks

 

[Ryan1524]

laser is nice for students since they're small and cheap now. the HP Laserjet 1012 is tiny and very afforable. and the nice thing about laser is it's easy on the ink and doesn't rub of whe you highlight them, sicne they're waterproof. but they don't print color, atleast not this model. the ones that do are usually very costly and large. on the other hand, i found an inkjet, the Canon i860, it prints b/w page with the same cost (if the stats are to be trusted) as the laser, but it has the ability to churn out amazing photo prints as well. so that's what i went with. it's also cheaper initially.

the cost of ink on the canon is also improved b the fact that it uses 5 separate tanks for each color as opposed to one. so you don't have to throw the entire cartridge out if only one colour ink is gone.

 

[mkaake]

laser is nice for students since they're small and cheap now. the HP Laserjet 1012 is tiny and very afforable. and the nice thing about laser is it's easy on the ink and doesn't rub of whe you highlight them, sicne they're waterproof. but they don't print color, atleast not this model. the ones that do are usually very costly and large. on the other hand, i found an inkjet, the Canon i860, it prints b/w page with the same cost (if the stats are to be trusted) as the laser, but it has the ability to churn out amazing photo prints as well. so that's what i went with. it's also cheaper initially.

the cost of ink on the canon is also improved b the fact that it uses 5 separate tanks for each color as opposed to one. so you don't have to throw the entire cartridge out if only one colour ink is gone.

plus, from what i understand, they use ink tanks instead of the ones that have the print heads built onto the cartridge (correct me if i'm wrong), so they're typically much cheaper on ink refills...

 

[Kwyjibo]

I just got a Canon i560 for about $80 shipped and its a very nice printer. It replaces my Samsung Laser that I killed and the Canon driver is 1000000000000 times nicer than the samsung one was. Take a look at canon's i560 I haven't read very many bad reviews for it ... even the pictures i've printed thus far look good and its about half of your first price range.

 

[Ryan1524]

yes. the canon's inktanks are separate from the inkheads. so the inks are cheaper to replace. and driver installation was a breeze on Panther.